After nearly two years of development, open betas, closed betas, and secret semi-open-but-really-closed betas, Sandbox 1.0 has finally been released.


What's new in this version of Sandbox? I'm glad you asked.


Sandbox 1.0 brings lots of improvements and new features to the table. The first thing you'll notice is the totally revamped interface. We've added a simplified server browser that lets you hop into a game quickly without having to worry about messing with the server filters. Once you start playing, you'll notice the new spawn buttons that feature pictures of each of the 195 spawnable objects and vehicles. Of course, Sandbox 1.0 includes an even greater variety of vehicles from the world of Battlefield 2, as well as some custom vehicles from great BF2 modders like SatNav.

The kit selection screen has been streamlined with the ability to spawn with any of the core BF2 kits from all three teams, in addition to the usual Construction and Zombie kits you know so well. To help those with aspirations of reconstructing Burj Dubai, we've added a jetpack to the construction kit that lets you quickly fly around without worrying about taking damage crashing into things.

The previous release of Sandbox brought you the ability to "group" your creations and save them online, making it so much easier to trap your friends in boxes when they weren't looking. With this release, we're introducing the ability to animate your objects and groups. You can build a garage with a door that opens, a house with a functioning elevator, or a death box that crushes your friend to death after you've trapped him inside. Sandbox is truly fun for all ages!

Over the years, Sandbox has had an awesome community of fans that have modified our code to add their own features. We can say with confidence that Sandbox would not still be going without these adventorous coders. To help you guys out, we've completely rebuilt the gameplay logic from the ground up, allowing for addons to be created that easily plug in and add new features to Sandbox. It is now much easier to customize Sandbox to your liking and make sure your server is the most popular one of all. The guide to creating addons is already accessible on the Sandbox Wiki so you can get a head start.

As with previous versions, we highly encourage everyone to post their creations, large or small, in our showcase section found here!

Our good friend and movie director Sir. XaliaS has created an 8-minute rFactor video for a video competition run by fan site rFactor Central. It's not exactly related to Sir. nor Battlefield, but I think it still deserves to be showcased. Check it out:


Here are XaliaS's own comments on the video:

It's been a learning experience from to go; I barely had enough time to complete it yet alone polish it to a standard I would have liked, I started shooting only 2 days before the deadline when I finally got the time off.

Work Times:

8-10 hours filming.
12-15 hours editing.
6 hours encoding - 3 versions.
5 hours uploading. (Thanks HD)

Definitely the fastest 48 hours of my life. I actually submitted the video before I completed it. It only cost me a weekend to make. :-)

So about the film, I'm brand new to the rFactor film scene but I've been gaining enthusiasm for rFactor for a few years. Bringing over my experience with BF2 machinima I'm used to having total control over where and how I use the camera. I appreciate in rFactor it's a little more difficult with the free cam; being inherently jerky, though I try to be as smooth as possible. Using track cameras for the whole film would have been unacceptable.

I designed for a natural progression through the film while trying to be unique via the undertaking of small micro-story elements throughout the scenes at a medium pace with upbeat music and exciting action, rather than just a montage of random clips bogged down on emotion. It features a cocktail of music segments courtesy of Immediate Music, Corner Stone Cues, Muse and Hybrid.

It wasn't perfect with the amount of footage I was rushing to capture but some moments worked as I hoped. I also planned to give each mod is own 'spotlight' time, which again was very difficult without drawing things out, a lot of the shots had to be cut when it was nearing the 10 minute mark.

The film focuses on the cars more than the tracks, and composed in a way that groups certain cars into visually logical groups or themes. Some are more serious than others, it's not my style to cut inside jokes from the final cut if I happen to capture them, so if you find a few small things humorous, chances are it was intentional. I hope it shows rFactor for what it is, full customization, any car on any track against any class, immersion and user made content, the greatest strength of rFactor against other racing sims.

Well, it has certainly been a while since the Sir. Community released something from its bowels. Because the vBulletin feed that feeds our front page drops off stories older than a certain cutoff (5 years?), I've felt that it is necessary for me to write one. So, here's quick rundown of what has been happening around the Sir. Community and some of its inhabitants.

Sir. AAK625 took a trip to Denmark last December to learn the customs of indigenous Danish peoples and meet our longtime member Bobcat. Be sure to check out the pictures from that trip if you haven't already. He has been quite busy in the past few months, so if you haven't received threatening messages on MSN from him recently, don't be alarmed.

On that note, I'm headed to Sweden again! Sir. MatDef has also decided to come along...we will be sailing the Baltic Sea in May in search of beautiful Scandinavian women and Battlefield 3. Of course, we'll be visiting DICE to check out what they've been working on and to fulfill the terms of a bet with an employee involving a donkey costume and a Mirror's Edge CD key. It's a long story. More information and pictures will be forthcoming, of course.

The *AUS* Clan (from Australia, of course) has been running an epic Battleracer tournament since January. Over 20 racers have participated in each of the seven rounds so far, in some of the awesome-est Battleracer races I've ever seen. Our very own Sir. Shpox is a participant in the tournament and I've also registered alongside him for the "Sir. Clan" team. Sir. Shpox is in a respectable 10th place out of the 30+ participants and our team is in 9th place amongst the 12 participating teams. Some people are just too damn good at Battleracer, haha. Unfortunately, we're pretty far out of contention for the awesome prize packs for the winning teams, with the top finisher receiving $300 cash. The last race is taking place on Thursday, February 26th, at 8:30PM Sydney time. The guys at netGameRadio will be shoutcasting the whole race and doing some pre- and post-race interviews.

And finally, a note of gratitude - I'd like to thank WolfServers for their ongoing support and servers that we've been using for mod testing and filming. Cheers to Sir. TheHeartSmasher from Wolf for his contributions to the community.